- Yardstik has raised $30 million in Series B funding, led by Harbert Growth Partners, bringing the company’s total funding to $65 million.
- The company, based in Minneapolis, now offers continuous monitoring to more than 1,000 customers after hiring employees.
- The CEO of Yardstik states that the latest developments in AI have made it easier and cheaper to carry out large-scale identity fraud.
Yardstik, a Minneapolis-based workforce trust platform, has raised $30 million in its Series B funding round, led by Harbert Growth Partners, bringing the company’s total funding to $65 million.
Returning investors Rally Ventures, MissionOG, Crosslink Capital, Grotech Ventures, and Great North Ventures also participated in this round.
“The background check industry has been around for a long time, but the players in the space really sold a point-in-time check to these customers, and they called that security. Risk changes every single day after that, and a background check doesn’t continue to watch and monitor. AI is making identity nearly free to fake — anyone can spoof someone’s identity, create false resumes, doctor credentials. This category is getting replaced by continuous workforce trust, and we believe incumbents can’t follow us here,” Andrew Johnson, Yardstik’s chief executive, tells Tech Funding News.
A background check that never stops watching
The average fraud scheme at work lasts 12 months before it is detected. In 43% of incidents, fraud is discovered through employee tips. Yardstik points out that generative AI reduces the time it takes to detect fraud. Furthermore, Gartner predicts that by 2028, one in every four candidate profiles will be fraudulent.
Johnson states that rather than carrying out a single background check, Yardstik combines background screening, fraud prevention, credential verification, and continuous monitoring on a single platform. The system can detect unusual activity over time; for instance, if a person applies for a job in Minnesota but their device is located in the Dominican Republic, that could be a warning sign.
He says, “It’s possible that they’re on holiday, but it’s something you might want to verify again before agreeing to have that person join. Our aim is to make sure that employers know who they are working with on the first day and throughout the period of employment.”
The shift from one-off verification
Yardstik was set up in 2020 under the name Peak Verify and founded by Matt Meents.
The company then decided to focus on background checks for gig marketplaces and staffing companies before changing its name. In October 2024, Meents appointed Johnson as CEO, who had joined the company in 2022 as chief operating officer after previously leading revenue growth at Branch and Dialpad. Meents remains a member of Yardstik’s board.
On the subject of competitors, Johnson says, “There are a lot of single-point competitors, but no one else is carrying out the full combination of screening, fraud prevention, credential verification, and continuous monitoring that we are doing; no one else is doing all of those things.”
Its closest competitor is Checkr, which was established in San Francisco in 2014 by Daniel Yanisse and Jonathan Perichon, has raised more than $800 million, and was most recently valued at $5 billion.
Yardstik is by no means the only company adopting this method. Deel acquired Clarity, a deepfake-detection startup, to introduce continuous identity verification when hiring and granting IT access. Likewise, the Paris-based company Prelude raised $20 million from 20VC in May 2026 to develop a continuous trust layer for the internet.
Growth, headcount, and what’s next
According to Johnson, the company recorded 149% year-on-year revenue growth in July, which was followed by further growth in August. Yardstik now serves more than 1,000 customers, including Gopuff, LiveOps, Sharetown, TaskRabbit, HUNGRY, and H&R Block; it also integrates with hiring platforms such as Greenhouse, Lever, Workable, and Paylocity.
Johnson attributes this growth to Yardstik’s wide-ranging approach and its partner strategy. The company has 65 employees and was most recently placed at No. 861 on the 2026 Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing private companies.
Brian Carney, general partner at Harbert Growth Partners, pointed to retention as the number that convinced him to lead the round: “Yardstik’s growth shows employers want a way to manage risk that doesn’t stop the day someone’s hired. Its 98% account retention rate over the past three years shows that customers continue to see value in the layered protection they provide beyond the background checks at hire.”
The company’s short-term aim is to become profitable as a result of this funding round without having to seek any additional capital. The key challenge lies in shifting from single-time checks to continuous monitoring of the workforce.
According to Yardstik’s pitch deck, the “human-to-human trust” market could exceed $120 billion per year if this approach is applied to areas such as vehicle rentals, tenant screening, lending, and dating apps. However, these products do not currently exist, and regulations and consent requirements vary considerably across sectors.
It will be up to either Yardstik or a larger competitor to be the first to introduce this model to the market and thus determine the outcome.
Check out the pitch below
